PhD, student
Name: Veronica Santinelli
Nationality: Italian
Email: veronica.santinelli@unipa.it

Veronica Santinelli, born in Jesi (An) in 1987, graduated at the University of Ancona with a Master’s degree in Marine Biology in 2013. After graduation, thanks to a six-months-grant of “Campus World” of University of Ancona, she spent a postgraduate training period at Institution of Aquaculture of Hellenic Centre for Marine Research in Crete (Greece), where she was involved in maintenance and management of broodstock (fish) facilities and larvae rearing. After this period, in 2015, she got a position as Research Technician (12 months) for the Hypoxia Project (http://marine-hypoxia.eu/) at Marine Ecology Laboratory of University of Crete in collaboration with Institute of Oceanography of Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Crete (Greece). During this year, she took part in seagrass and sediment sampling activities and processing to find out how hypoxia events could affect these two compounds. In addition, the study was focused on the determination of a relationship between the growth of the seagrass and sediments status and between seagrass regression and hypoxia events. Meanwhile, she had the opportunity to take part of the Scientific Diving team of HCMR and participated to underwater research activities at Experimental Underwater Biotechnological Park: monitoring of environmental parameters and seagrass meadows, sampling of sediment and visual census of macrofauna. In addition, during spring and summer 2016, she was involved as volunteer research assistant in a scientific expedition in Arabian Gulf (Abu Dhabi) and western Indian Ocean (Oman) with PhD student Daniele D’Agostino of Nottingham University (England). The expedition was part of “Coping with extreme environments: reef fishes within the world’s warmest sea” project in collaboration with New York University of Abu Dhabi and the research goal was to investigate the phenotypic and population genetic mechanisms that underlie the persistence of marine species within the Arabian Gulf’s extreme environment.

Since November 2016, she is a PhD student in Earth and Marine Sciences of the University of Palermo and her research is focused on Blue Carbon Ecosystems. Principally, she wants to contribute to the knowledge of the capacity of seagrass meadows and saltmarshes to act as sink of carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous and to evaluate effects of human and natural impacts of nutrients and burial rate.        

Latest Publications and Conference contributions

• Apostolaki, E. T., Holmer, M., Santinelli, V., & Karakassis, I. (2018). Species-specific response to sulfide intrusion in native and exotic Mediterranean seagrasses under stress. Marine Environmental Research, 134(July), 85–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marenvres.2017.12.006
• Papadaki, M., Mazzella, D., Santinelli, V., Fakriadis, I., Sigelaki, I., & Mylonas, C. C. (2018). Hermaphroditism and reproductive function of hatchery-produced sharpsnout seabream (Diplodus puntazzo) under attenuated annual thermal cycles. Aquaculture, 482 (September 2017), 231–240. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2017.09.028
• Vizzini, S., Santinelli, V., Cundy, A., Tramati, C.D., Mazzola, A. (2017). Carbon stock in a highly degraded marine coastal area. “Interdisciplinary Symposium”, Corte (Corsica), 5-7 July 2017.
• D’Agostino, D., Chapman, B., Burt, J., Reader, T., Santinelli, V., Cavalcante, G., Feary, D. (2017). Coping with extreme environments: the influence of thermal variation on fish behavioural ecology. 50^th Anniversary Symposium of Fisheries SocietyofBritish Isles, Exeter (UK), 3-7 July 2017. (Speed talk and Poster presentation)
• Apostolaki, E.T., Vizzini, S., Santinelli, V., Kaberi, E., Christou, E.,Papathanasiou, E. (2015). Invasion of Halophila stipulacea in the Mediterranean Sea: an introduced carbon reservoir. “Integrated Marine Research in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea”- Final scientific conference of PERSEUS – Brussels (Belgium), 7-9 December 2015 (Poster presentation).
• Santinelli, V., Papadaki, M., Mylonas, C.C., (2014). Sex differentiation and hermaphroditism in sharp-snout sea bream, Diplodus puntazzo, in captivity. “10^th 10th International Symposium on Reproductive Physiology of Fish- Olhao (Portugal), 25-30 May 2014 (Poster presentation).
• Piccinetti, C. C., Montis, C., Bonini, M., Laurà, R., Guerrera, M. C., Radaelli, G., Vianello, F., Santinelli, V., Maradonna, F., Nozzi, V., Miccoli, A., Olivotto, I. (2014). Transfer of Silica-Coated Magnetic (Fe₃O₄ ) Nanoparticles Through Food: A Molecular and Morphological Study in Zebrafish. Zebrafish, 11(6), 567–579. https://doi.org/10.1089/zeb.2014.1037